Spurrier said he definitely would have spiked the ball at the end of the SEC title game. Georgia coach Mark Richt elected not to do it, and the clock ran out.

“We all know that’s what he should have done,” Spurrier said of spiking the ball. “Yeah, we all know that. They would have had two plays. But I don’t know. If they had hit a touchdown right there, it wouldn’t have mattered. But we all know you should do that (spike the ball).”

You almost get the feeling he wished playing on there would have worked.

Aside from obvious reasons you know Spurrier is delighted that he will have more free time than he planned this holiday season since he does not have to spend numerous hours dumping every bit of insight he has on UGA to the ND staff.

Can’t tell from the article, but I wonder if he voluntarily offered that up or of a trolling reporter put it up on a tee for him. Spurrier is one of the few coaches that I could actually see doing the former.

Im thinking a vocal part of the UGA fan base agrees with Spurrier. Wonder if it is the same part that complains about CMR not running up the score on someone as well. I recall people on here opining for the killer instinct…seems like what CMR, et al, elected to do was very much “killer instinct.” It would have been conservative to spike the ball. Alas, I feel the same group would have fussed if we did spike and did not get a td. Cant please all the people all of the time I guess.

I’ve sliced and diced the spike 1000 different ways since that fateful moment, talked to friends who know more football than I do, read the Senator’s and TKK’s good posts, and I still think I would have spiked the ball. And this isn’t hindsight — everybody watching in my home knows I was screaming “spike it! spike it! spike it!”. I think we needed the equivalent of taking a deep breath and counting to 10 before you say or do something you regret.

That being said, I think CMR’s decision is entirely defensible given his explanation. The biggest benefit was not giving Bama’s D time to set, especially since they may have expected us to spike.

Several friends and I agree, however, that in our viewing of the play that was run there was little chance of success, tip or not. We’ll never know either way. I guess we can only hope the clock would have stopped without the tip.

We impressed. Without the 2 per conference rule, we’d be headed to a BCS bowl.

I don’t think there was a clear cut right or wrong there. Richt made a decision and had a reasonable explanation for it. Alabama has the second best scoring defense in the country (cfbstats.com) and the second best red zone defense (ncaa.com) in the country. Was our best strategy there CLEARLY to let them reset? We wanted to get three tries instead of two. Even if there was “little chance of success” there, sans a tip you have an incomplete pass which has the same result as a spike. Wouldn’t you want as many tries as possible against that type of defense?

That’s my position too Puffdawg. I can see the case for spiking, just don’t know why those guys cannot see the advantage of continuing to throw against them when we had been successful, they were on their heels, and they weren’t rushing us. Richt said we had the play we wanted, against the setup we wanted. There was time for another play barring some diaster so it wasn’t a hit or miss to the staff. Just a bad set of circumstances that denied us the win. Hurts, but there are really two good cases here for how that should have been played. Close games require this sort of “what if” discussions, and this game has several swing points, not just the last 15 seconds.

How about this: Richt is ahead of all the dumbass anouncers and coaches. It was brilliant, he had faith in his QB and receivers and he had game impetous going like a downhill ski racer. Richt’s was the best decision as far as I can see on hindsight.

I knew the game was lost as soon as Conley slipped, but that was due to Bama’s MVP getting a hand on the ball, not Conley’s effort to make a play. Richt is on the high ground here. Danielson and others who wanted the spike weren’t even considering a possible 3-play , like Richt. That’s why he is our coach. He was the smartest person in the Dome to consider a run up to the line and throwing it instead of spiking. And he’s in the arena where the thinking don’t come cheap in those situations. Good Dawg!

I would have spiked the ball, because I’d have thought I couldn’t get off an organized play otherwise. However, since Georgia WAS able to get off a decent play, I won’t quibble with the decision at all. Went against the conventional wisdom, but if it had worked, Richt is a genius.

This is the truth. They were on the ropes, and I think most Georgia fans (and a lot of Bama fans) just knew a TD was going to be scored on that play. Big Mo had swung in that direction. Unfortunately, Alabama’s D had a different plan. It was absolutely the right call in my opinion. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

I wonder how much longer he will hang around. His demise (as a coach) could be expedited with a couple of beat downs by Georgia and Florida.
I would like to see a breakdown on where both teams (UGA and SC) are for the…say…next two or three years….you know..players, recruiting, etc. My gut tells me that Georgia is going to be on a big upswing in two or three years as the O’line grows and is built on, and as Mason grows into to the job of replacing Murray…if Murray leaves this winter, then we can move the timeline up a year..not because Mason is going to be immediately better than AM, but because he will have that first year as a starter over a year earlier. Things are bright now and the future looks very good!

Be careful what you ask for. If you see Steve and Jeri watching Florida games, after each game he’ll hold his own press conferences and question every move your current coarch makes. He’ll end up being a cancer to your program.

He’s an ass and he’ll always be an ass. FL fans and SC fans can love him because he brought them wins. I can understand that. There’s no denying he is a winning coach. He’s an ass. You know it too.

I somehow doubt that, HVL. Since he has been a USCe, he has had several opportunities to throw bards Florida’s way. He rarely does that. And when he does, they are usually very mild. At least, mild compared to what he does to UGA and Richt.

I was yelling for the spike like everyone else in my area. However, I was also yelling for the spike after the long T. King reception, and we let 10 seconds off the clock before we snapped the ball. The result of that play was a 26 yard pass to Artie Lynch to set up the final 15 seconds from inside the 10.

Would we have completed the Artie Lynch play had we spiked the ball and allowed Bama to substitute? Who knows, but I certainly would trade those 10 seconds for that play any day.

As such, I cannot second guess the decision, although I wish it had been made quicker and not been tipped, etc. We still should have had one more play in that scenario.

It really cheapens the great play to tip the ball made by the lineman to make this a ‘spike’ or ‘no spike’ discussion. The kid made a great, disruptive play. Whether we spike the ball and re-group or run the play we did, the outcome wasn’t determined by the clock…it was determined by that effort.

That’s what is so crazy to me. In a close game, there are literally 20 plays you could circle and say ‘there!’…like taking a sack in the 1Q to push us to 50 yards on the FG, not converting on the 3rd and 1, the umpire not calling the personal foul on the blindside hit on Murray, the referee missing the numerous holding penalties on Lacy’s first TD run, Saban going for 2 in the 3rd Q….why anyone would focus on the spike vs. no spike instead of the actually football plays when trying to dissect the reason behind the game’s outcome, is beyond me.

Gotta believe it does, but then again from what I gathered from the action was mostly shoddy tackling by the LBers and a Dawg defense that was worn down “on contact”, not so much by DLine angles. Of course, I could just be rationalizing away the pain of the L.

I thought spiking the ball was standard operating procedure in that situation and I was shocked as hell when they ran a play. But after reading their reasoning it makes sense. It just didn’t work. The guy that tipped the pass made the play of the game. Damn proud of the team and the coaches. Bring on Nebraska!

+1 to all of that. I would add one thing that I haven’t noticed people talking about much. The coaches make decisions based on the personnel we have on the field: player skillsets, experience, etc. That is one reason you see Artie Lynch on the field during the final drive instead of Jay Rome; even though Jay Rome is a better receiver, he doesn’t know the playbook nearly as well as Lynch, something crucial when every second matters; remember, the timeout we had to burn earlier in the 2nd half was b/c Rome didn’t know the play we called.

During that final drive, we were relying on a lot of inexperienced players. For example, Lynch almost didn’t get out of bounds on one play b/c he was fighting for extra yards: admirable but mistaken. As for Chris Conley, he’s talented, but if he was more experienced, he likely would not have caught the final pass. I actually would like the idea of not spiking the ball if we had had experienced personnel who would not get rattled by the pressure and make mistakes. In light of our inexperience, though, I think spiking the ball (and getting an extra play) would have been a better approach.

Of course, it’s all hindsight. While that was heartbreaking, it was an epic context. Even though I hate that we lost, having a “Rocky I-esque” ending isn’t so bad.

It’s not far-fetched at all. You just have to recognize the game situation: you’re on the 5-yd line; if you catch it, you have either to score or get out of bounds, or it’s game over; presumably, you know the route and have recognized where defenders are positioned. Recognizing all these circumstances, you can realize that you will NOT be able to get into the endzone, and even if you are able to get out of bounds in time, our chances of scoring are not much better from the 5-yd-line than from the 9-yd-line.

It’s a lot of information to process, but that’s the sort of thing that comes w/ experience. Of course the receiver’s impulse is to catch the pass, but cognizance of the game situation counsels against doing so.

While this sort of thing doesn’t happen ALL the time, I’ve definitely seen college football players exercise this kind of restraint. I know I’ve seen college receivers intentionally drop passes to preserve time, albeit, perhaps not that close to the goal line. And I’ve definitely seen runningbacks break a big run and take a knee at the 1-yd-line rather than scoring, knowing that their team would definitely secure the win by killing the remaining time in the victory formation; while the runningback’s impulse is to score, he recognizes that under that scenario, scoring would simply give the ball back to the opponent w/ time to score.

If Washaun Ealey had been more experienced in 2010, the end of the Ga. Tech game wouldn’t have been as interesting. The “Genius’s” genius plan to let UGA score would have failed, and UGA would have been able to kill the clock rather than leaving Tech w/ time on the clock to win.

Ask yourself this: if Conley finds himself in that same situation 2 years from now (in his senior year), do you not think he would intentionally drop the pass? He would have learned from his experience.

Bobby, see Puffdawg’s post above. Don’t keep making statements that look like you are trying to incite an avalanche of people who, right now, want to put down your entire post for fallaceous reasoning.

I think we do get another play if the ball isn’t tipped and it doesn’t score the TD. Richt and Co felt they could run the play to MM in the corner of the end zone and if he doesn’t get the TD catch it is incomplete and we have 3-5 secs left on the clock to take one more shot at the end zone. Conley caught the ball at about the :05 sec mark so if that pass makes it to the back corner unobstructed and goes incomplete there would have been time for another play.

You get two shots to score with either strategy if something like the tip or an INT doesn’t occur which could happen with either scenario. The decision was basically which is more valuable, not letting Bama change personnel or having a brief moment to call the play, settle our own players, and remind them not to catch a ball short of the end zone? Richt chose not letting Bama substitute. We had Bama on its heels so I have no problem with the decision. Their LB just made a damn good play to disrupt the pass.

Damn! SO CLOSE! Heart breaking but I am proud of how the coaches and players performed.

Yea, it’s definitely debatable. I just think 5 seconds is cutting it too close on a passing play, unless it’s a quick slant or something. Otherwise, it just seems like it would take too much time for the play to develop.

It was definitely possible, though, to get another play off w/ a second remaining. Either way, it was a hell of a play by Bama.

And since we’re talking “what ifs,” just imagine if Murray had had a 6’5″ Marlon Brown or 6’3″ Michael Bennett to throw to on that last play. Those guys are great redzone targets and would have been huge in this game.

Well I’ll be. Sounds like Spurrier actually respected Richt’s call–especially since it went contrary to what “we all know”. In fact, I think he’d like to compliment Richt, but since Richt coaches Georgia, we’re stuck with the quote we’ve got.

If both Spurrier and Saban are tipping their caps to you after a game, I think you did a damn fine job.

The team spends all year practicing the two minute drill, quite possibly every practice includes it. I trust that their execution reflected what they were comfortable with based on these practices. I like the idea of not spiking the ball, almost like a fast break offense in basketball, keeping the defense on its heels.

I don’t know if anybody brought this up, but Jim Mora Jr. opted to spike the ball in the PAC 12 champ. game and it backfired. They ended up having plenty of seconds on the clock but found themselves facing a 4th down and 3 and wishing they had not wasted a down. They attempted a long FG and missed.

Yeah. My favorite all-time playoff proposal is one that tailors the postseason to the realities of the regular season: two teams for years like this, four teams for years like 2004 and don’t even bother with a playoff for years like 2007. ESPN would never go for that, sadly.

“We have this rule that we can’t have more than two teams in the BCS from one conference. Who came up with this rule? To leave teams out like Georgia, Texas A&M and Oklahoma . . . All of us want to see those teams in games that matter in the BCS Bowl games. And you’re going to give us Northern Illinois? What have they done this year?

Part of the problem with All-SEC teams now is there are 14 teams to divide the same number of spots by. With the depth of talent in this conference, it is hard to narrow down by position. And there is the differnces in offensive styles to consider (AM would be my 1st team pick to run our offense but Johnny Football would be my choice if I needed a different style engineer.) The individual honors are less sigificant than the team accomplishments in this sport. Some players “take one for the team” such as John Jenkins getting double teamed so often opening up the opportunities for Ogletree and Jarvis to get more tackles and sacks. I don’t feel we are getting disrespected in these selections, just too many to choose from and voters can’t see all the players every week, just the stats.

Remember in the old days how we just loved college football? Don’t remember much about stats, but boy could I pick ‘em then. Halceon days… Gone with the Wind.

Bloviation for the Dawgnation

Quote Of The Day

“It's definitely different not knowing exactly who it's gonna be, but in a way, I feel like that's good,” he said. “One of my old coaches from Valdosta told me that competition is one of the best coaches. And I feel like, as well as each one of those three guys is performing, they're not gonna do anything but make each other better.” -- Jay Rome, The Red & Black, 3/25/15